Announcement

Adam: All right. Welcome everybody to Hump Day Hangouts Episode 215. Man, I'm feeling weird because I had to sit super low to fit the special Christmas headgear in range here. But I'm looking at everyone else and everyone else looks as goofy as me, so I'm pretty happy.

Bradley: Hey, who are you calling goofy?

Marco: What? What?

Adam: To share the goofiness, sorry, I meant the holiday cheeriness, let's start off by saying hi to everybody. Chris, how are you doing, man?

Chris: Doing good here. I'm in the mountains in Austria, so unfortunately, no costume for me this week. But maybe next week.

Adam: See, we can't even see you. You could have been wearing a Yeti outfit or something, we'd have no idea.

Chris: Yeah. Like I'm just in a feature story.

Bradley: Or you could have been buck naked. For that reason, I'm glad your webcam's off.

Chris: Exactly.

Adam: That's how we lost all of our viewers. Hernan, how is it going, man? How's the middle of summer for you?

Hernan: It's good, man. Yeah. We have a lot of these decoration, with snows and shit. Here, it's like 40 degrees Celsius or something, it's nuts. But anyways, I'm really, we're really excited for this week, for next week, what we have coming up, so really good to be here.

Adam: That is awesome. Sorry, it cracks me up. It's a great hat. Bradley, how are you doing?

Bradley: I'm well, man. I got my elf hat on, with my elf ears. It's got to be a hat for a kid because it's squeezing the shit out of my head. I feel like I'm a little light-headed and dizzy from it.

Adam: That's good. If Bradley starts getting angry towards the end of Hump Day Hangouts, you know what's going on, it's the hat.

Bradley: No. I'm gonna lose the hat here when I go off camera.

Adam: Good deal. Well, we got a few announcements for everybody and then as always we're going to jump into answering your questions for you. Real quick though, I want to say, if you're new to Semantic Mastery, first of all, thanks for watching, whether you're watching us live right now or if you're watching a replay on YouTube, that's awesome.

If you're looking for the place where you wanna get started with Semantic Mastery, because it's a question that comes up a lot, grab the Battle Plan. All you have to do is go to Battleplan.semanticmastery.com. That's gonna give you the repeatable results. It covers a really wide range of various stuff, like ranking new sites, what to do with press releases, how to do keyword research. It's not just the guide, we've packed a lot into there. We've got links to tons of training videos, all sorts of good stuff.

Also, if you're saying “Okay. Well, that's great. What's next?”, come join the Masterminds. If you're really looking to take things up several levels, if you're looking to form that network, that peer group, if you really wanna take your local digital marketing to the next level, come join the Mastermind. You can find out more about that at Mastermind.semanticmastery.com.

Speaking of the Mastermind, I think we've got a couple things coming up. Hernan, I think there's something going on next week, right?

Hernan: Yeah. Next week we're gonna announce, we're gonna have a big announcement, so that's gonna be pretty awesome. So, stay tuned. If you are being on the fence about joining the Mastermind, I'm not gonna go deep into that today, but if you are being on the fence, we're gonna have great news for you. We have a bunch of stuff going up for the Mastermind, for the current Mastermind members and the new Mastermind members, like the POFU paths. We have a new members area. We have a bunch of stuff coming up, bi-weekly calls that have been going up for quite a bit, and Bradley always over deliver. Stay tuned, next week's gonna be pretty amazing. If you are being on the fence to join the Symantec Mastery Mastermind, just be here next week because it's gonna be pretty awesome.

Bradley: Yeah. Just quickly, I wanna add to that. We're calling it POFU paths or pathways, which is anybody that's been through or has joined the Toastmasters International. They recently had updated kind of like their course that you go through, their courses that you go through in order to become a distinguished Toastmaster, any one of the levels in between starting off in that. Essentially, it's a training program.

What was cool about it was they updated it from like old paper books to an online portal. The old paper method was you had specific books you had to go through and you could kind of jump around at which speeches you wanna do within the books, but you pretty much had to go in a specific order. It was very limited. But then when they rolled out the pathways program last year it basically allowed people to go in. It's kind of do like a survey or questionnaire they fill out about themselves and then it would kind of direct them and say, “Okay. Look, we've got all these different courses that you can take and we can direct you into this way or that way.”

I thought it was brilliant. I thought it was really refreshing as a member of Toastmaster. I thought that it would be good for … I talked to my partner's about it, and Adam was in Toastmasters as well, and we thought that that would be a much better way to introduce people to Semantic Mastery, especially in the Mastermind. Because we've been told over and over again it's like a fire hose of information, when people come in they get overwhelmed, they don't know where to start. So, we wanted to kind of make it easier to really give people specific paths, whether you're a startup or if you're in the growth phase, in other words, you're already making money but you're trying to grow your business.

That's really what we're gonna be announcing next week. Hernan's put a lot of work into developing this out, guys. I highly recommend you come check it out.

That said, there's one other thing I do wanna mention. I know we did the Local Lease Pro update webinar, I think Adam is gonna mention something about that because that replay is gonna be taken down today and all the bonuses go away as well. So, if you haven't watched that, I would highly recommend that you go watch that now.

One of the things that I was talking about through that webinar was all the processes that go into developing out these assets is in a way that we can scale it. Because it's one thing to know how to build out a GMB asset on your own, that's all well and good, but if it takes four or five hours to do that, how many can you really do yourself is my point. If you really wanna scale this business and this opportunity while it exists, while it lasts, because we don't know how long it will, then you should really be focused on scaling.

That's something that I'm covering extensively in the Mastermind, is the scaling options. I've been working with a small group from our POFU Live event that we did earlier this year and we're developing out processes to scale so we can build many, many assets per week and have personnel or outsource that do it for us. That's what we've been developing, is the processes and the training to develop or outsource this. In other words, to train our outsources to do the processes that we have set up and build everything to our specifications.

That's what we've been sharing in the Mastermind. Again, if you guys are looking to take advantage of the opportunity that it is present right now, while it still exists, then I would highly recommend you come join the Mastermind where you're gonna be able to scale so much quicker than if you try to figure all this stuff out on your own. Adam?

Adam: Awesome. Yeah. Real quick, I never do this, can I share my screen?

Bradley: Yeah, please. I'll lock it on you.

Adam: All right. Let me do this. All right. If you aren't in the Facebook group, first of all come, join our Facebook group. But the free Copy & Paste Local Lead Gen Funnel for local businesses was the winner this month of the poll we put in there. We got that put together for you. Hernan created the best practices as well as some kind of insights. I'm not gonna go deep into it. You can go here, it's free. That's it. It's free. Go get it. Check it out. Hernan, like I said, recorded some great information for that. You can import it to your account. Hernan even got some ideas on what you can do if you're not a user of one of the page builders. I'll put the link to that on the page. Like I said, that's awesome. It was most requested one. Go grab it.

Next up, like Bradley said, the replay from Monday is down. Like we said, it was only 48 hours, but if you wanna take advantage of this, along with the other people who have so far, you can get Local Lease Pro, you can get all the stuff Bradley was talking about, and you can still get all the bonuses, but that's going away real quick after Hump Day Hangouts. Right? The bonuses include the one-on-one private call with Bradley, the free verified GMB listing, and free client prospecting with the Video Lead-gen system. All right. This is a pretty amazing one. We tried to make it so that literally it's like you're getting this for free. If you buy this, the bonuses are worth more than the product that's already discounted. I'll put that link up there as well.

If you've already got Local Lease Pro and you're looking to take advantage of some of the MGYB sales, we got the crazy Christmas sales up already. I'll put that link on. I'm not gonna go into detail, you can go through here and see we got some great deals, like the Syndication Networks is at 40% off, Done For You RYS Stacks 30% off, Press Releases, as well as verifications and a bunch of other stuff. Cruise through. We've got a couple of weeks, but this won't last forever either. It's coming down at the end of the year, right before New Year's.

Bradley: Yeah. I would say, guys, go through those, the specials for Christmas through our MGYB because there's a lot of really good deals there. For example, the Press Releases is $20 off, so you can get the Press Releases, the same that we use for our business. I talk about how powerful they are all the time. You can even create your own organization page, which is incredibly powerful. It's a great link hub, really. It's a semantic hub that you can point as a link target. It uses a link target. It's fabulous. It's got iFrames in it and all that stuff. You can get those for $79 with that $20 off coupon, which is fabulous. If I were you, I'd buy several of them. If you don't have your own subscription to a Press Release distribution service, come buy them from MGYB. They're really, really good and right now they're inexpensive so I would take advantage of that.

Anything else, guys, or should I get into questions?

Adam: I think we're good to go.

Bradley: Okay. Let's do it.

Hernan: Let's go.

Does Publishing The Same GMB Post To Multiple Locations Of A Brand Hurt Rankings?

Marco: I would, too. There's no point in that. It's the same thing. Google is getting the same thing multiple times. You have to think how will that affect what I'm trying to do, which is trigger the algorithm in a positive manner. All you're doing is feeding it the same information. Now if you know anything about the algorithm, it's looking for fresh unique relevant content that's updated on a regular basis, and 20 of the same posts for 20 different locations, does not meet that standard.

That's what I always try to look at. Guys, I am a fan of publishing as much new data as I can. Just feeding the bots new data as much as possible over and over and over again all day every day, that's what I do. It works for me. You could try it and see how Google reacts. Yeah. I don't know if that would put the 20 locations at risk. I don't know what would happen because it's not something that I do, sorry.

Bradley: Yeah, me neither. I mean, because I always try to vary things, Jordan. I've said that, for years I've been saying that, I don't even build, use the same content for lead gen assets, at least I hadn't been when I was building WordPress sites. For GMB assets, it's slightly different. But again, I would recommend that you would vary the posts, for example. Even if you use the same post text, I would still have unique images, even if it's the same image but geo tagged for each individual location that you would be pushing out to, or something like that. I'm sure there's some way that you could automate that. I mean, I would do that, at least have it that way.

Something else is, we have the auto poster, the GMB Auto Poster, which now allows Spintax, which is pretty cool, and also post-siloing, and stuff like that. That might be something that you could use to where you could set up posting to all individual 20 locations. You go in and set up the post, but have it go out with the Spintax and everything. It would set out a different variation to each location, in other words. Right? That's something else.

By the way, guys, I'm working with a provider right now that's going to … We're gonna be able to provide you guys in our store, at MGYB, super spun GMB post articles so that you can just basically purchase one and it would be full of tokens, that you can swap the tokens out with your own keywords, GMB profile, name, phone number, target URLs, all that kind of stuff.

That'll be all easily interchange using find-and-replace function and then you'll be able to just copy-and-paste that into the GMB Auto Poster and set up Auto Republish on your posts. Every single time it goes to republish a post again, it's gonna select a new version, a new unspun version of that so that the text is always going to be unique. That's gonna be huge, guys, because it's gonna save you so much time and it's gonna be very inexpensive. Very inexpensive. That's something that's coming.

That's something that, Jordan, I think would probably work for what you're trying to do and that would at least vary it and make it unique, each post would be unique, somewhat unique anyways. That's a good question, though.

What Are The Most Important Things To Do For Keyword Research In 2019?

That's really good question. Most important things to do for keyword research in 2019? Well, considering I'm focusing solely on local stuff right now, I'm not doing any affiliate marketing, I'm not doing any real national stuff, well, not yet, I've got a big project coming up, but right now everything I'm working on is primarily just local stuff. So, for me, keyword discovery through GMB Insights is huge.

I've been saying this now for weeks, if not months, but today, I was actually developing out some more keywords going through Insights from many of my lead gen assets and looking at the keywords that are bringing the traffic to the GMB listing, the Maps listing, and what I'm finding is just an enormous amount of near me search queries. So. I'm targeting more and more near me stuff than anything right now and that's because it was speaking directly to the mobile algorithm at time and it's just working like crazy.

I mean, guys, I'm seeing as much as 50 and even 60% of the engagement coming to my GMB listings now through near me keywords. It's insane. It's crazy, some of the search queries that are bringing variations of some of the keywords and the way that people … and all that kind of data is new. Those are new type of queries, a lot of them. In other words, there's not a lot of historical data on that stuff, is my point.

I think using GMB Insights in search console, if you're doing more, maybe not necessarily local stuff, but search console. If you have search console, go do keyword discovery from there and you'll see what your site is getting impressions from. I think that's really, really important, guys, to see what Google thinks about your site and when it gives it impressions, puts it in the search results.

Search console is really good data for that, guys, because you can find queries or terms that were used that your site got exposure for that you didn't even know you have potential to get traffic from. Right? Just because you get exposure doesn't mean that you're gonna get traffic, because you could be on page nine. So, in search console, if you select the option to see the position, the average position, then it'll show you the impressions, the number of clicks, and then average position.

Like I said, if you look and you see a lot of impressions but no clicks, if you check the average position, it typically means because you're on page two or three or anywhere beyond that. Right? Because remember, where do you hide a dead body? On page two of Google, right? Anything really off of page one is very, very rarely gonna get any clicks. But if you're getting impressions, that means Google is already aware that your site is relevant to that query.

Those are really good opportunities, in my opinion, to optimize and find new sources of traffic that you would have otherwise overlooked. So, for me, besides the tried-and-true using Google Ads for discovery using alpha beta campaign structure, I love that, it still works really, really well, but then using search console in GMB Insights.

As far as tools, I still don't use any tools other than the ones that I've always mentioned, which is I use Google Trends as my starting point at all times and then I use Power Suggest Pro. I use the Google Keyword Planner sometimes because I do a lot of AdWords stuff, but I really just look at that to see if there's any traffic data from the keywords that I've extracted from Google Trends and from Power Suggest Pro. But whether or not it shows traffic or not, I don't care because if it's in Google Trends and/or suggest I already know there's traffic on those keywords. It just might mean that people aren't bidding on those keywords and that's why there's no AdWords traffic or Adwords Keyword Planner data, in other words.

That's my answer. Anybody else wanna comment on that?

Marco: Yeah. My thing is, once I start going in Google My Business, I'm just a total fan of being inside Local GMB Pro. It just makes things so simple. The thing is that the data that you get in Insights is really hyper-targeted, meaning that it goes by unique user. I'll give you Mario's Cab as an example because they're still getting tons of traffic even though we stopped posting for them for lack of payment. But I would have never thought to post with the keyword to just “taxi” or just “cab,” or “a cab.” That listing got people to come through by just looking for the keyword “taxi” or “cab.”

Who would think that you could rank for that or that you could get people to come through to their listing for that? If you have a TLD, that's impossible, or nearly impossible. The money that you'd have to spend to get to that level where you're getting traffic for “taxi” is incredible, but through GMB, we were able to. I just saw last month, 20 people came through using the word “taxi.”

Marco: Okay. Twenty came through using the word “cab.” Google tells you most popular queries for your business by unique users, so these are people who actually found the listing through that. It's phenomenal.

Bradley: Look at this. Look at this, guys. I haven't done any work for this listing in three months now maybe and it's still benefiting from the work that I did, which was really only about the initial optimization and I had a VA that was posting to it regularly, and then when payment stopped coming in we canceled or suspended the service. But it's still benefiting. Look, in just the last month, look at the number of engagements that it's gotten. The keywords that brought it, “taxi near me” and “cab companies near me.” What is that talking about, the “near me” keywords, guys? Remember, I just said that. Look at the number one search query, “taxi near me,” “cab company near me,” number two. “Cab near me,” “cabs near me.”

If we scroll through, I know these are saying less than 10, but you're still gonna see a lot of different “near me” or “in my area,” “close to me,” “close by.” Those are variations of “near me” search queries and it's huge. Like Marco said, “taxi.” “Taxi” brought 20 engagements in the last month. Does that make sense? For just the word “taxi,” just the word “cab.”

Again, and I've said this many, many times, mainly dealing in local from for my entire career, I have always targeted the keywords with a local modifier, especially with a real short tail keyword, like “taxi,” for example, or “plumber,” or “roofer,” or something like that. I would always optimize for the local modifier, which would be the city name appended to the keyword.

But now, because of what had just occurred in July with the mobile index first, it's no longer necessary, and we're proving it through Insights, which is actual data from Google, from engagements that occurred on our GMB assets, or the assets that we manage.

The point is, we're seeing that we're getting traffic from just short single phrase keywords in this case and we're getting direct traffic for it, of which I would have never attempted to optimize for. Or at least I would have known that it would be a dogfight to rank for in the traditional old-school SEO methods. But because so much shifted in July of this year, that's what opened up all this opportunity. Again, that's why my keyword research methods really haven't changed, except that I'm doing much more discovery through Google search console and GMB Insights now than I ever had before.

Should You Be Worried About Leaving Footprints For Google If You Keep All Your SEO Project Folders In Google Drive?

Hey, look, I know everybody has their own varying opinions on this. I think even Marco now keeps his data in Box or something else, not in Drive. But my entire business is in Drive, it always has been. I don't worry about that shit. I think Google's got much bigger fish to fry. If, at some point, I get where I feel like I'm nervous about it, I may change that, but for now, it's specifically for me, it's because it's an ease of use for me and my team. It's so much easier for me to manage everything within Drive and have all of my team members have access to it so we can collaborate real-time.

I know that there are other services to do it, but I don't want yet another fucking service that I've got to be logged into all the time. I've got too many as it is. I personally like Google apps and everything about Google. I've built my entire business on Google stuff. My entire business is in Google Drive and I'm okay with that. Again, everybody, to each their own. I'm not saying my way is right or wrong. Some of you might say I'm crazy, but I've been getting by just fine and I'm gonna continue to do so until someone proves to me that I need to change it.

Ken, I don't worry about it, but I know some people do. If you're a tin foil hat kind of guy, put another layer on and move your stuff outside of Drive. What do you think, Marco?

Marco: It's not so much that I worry about, it's just that I don't want Google having the data, that's all, and they go into Drive. I plan, the stuff that I'm doing is going to bring the type of revenue that's going to make Google pay attention. So if they do, I don't want them seeing shit anywhere. I'm not gonna make it easier for them to hit me. They've been known to single out people, target people and just wipe them out. So if that happens, it's not going to be because they got the information from me. They might get it from a competitor, they might get it from someone who dislikes me for whatever reason, but they're not gonna get it from me.

Bradley: There you go. Anybody else wanna comment on that?

Hernan: Yeah. I've been using Google Drive for quite a while now. Again, I'm not that worried about Google. Yeah. Maybe I should be a little bit more worried about that, I don't know.

Bradley: Yeah. Well, you're a paid traffic guy, not so much in this yoga anymore, so you don't have much to worry about, I suppose.

Hernan: Yeah.

Adam: Or Hernan doing the paid traffic stuff just to fool Google.

Bradley: Yeah. It's a mask. It's a distraction, right? A decoy.

Adam: A ruse.

Hernan: Yes.

Bradley: Okay. Will, I actually took the time to read through your question several times earlier because I had to try to really interpret what it was specifically that you were asking. I've got a couple things I wanna mention. I actually wrote up some notes for this question because there's a couple things. First of all, Will was at POFU Live. Will, if you're not in the Mastermind, which I thought you were, this was a type of question that's more suited for the Mastermind because it's long.

When we do the Mastermind webinar is we get into as deep a question as somebody wants to get into, there's really no limit to that. If somebody wants to come on, and we could spend two hours with one individual's question, if that's what it takes, that's fine, we're happy to do so. But in public, Hump Day Hang out setting like this, in order to be courteous of others, a long question like this would take me 10 minutes to read through it. Honestly, this is not really the type of format for this type of a question.

If you're not in the Mastermind, I'm gonna be giving you some shit right now, Will, you should be. Because you were at the POFU Live event anyways, so you should be in the Mastermind where you can ask these kind of questions. But if you're not, that's okay. I know you're in the POFU group because you were at the live event. We do have a Slack channel dedicated to the POFU attendees and you're more than welcome to jump in there and ask as many questions as you want, we'll answer them in almost real-time.

Again, if you're not in Mastermind, join it already, Will. If you don't, for whatever reason, then use the POFU Live group for extended questions such as this. Now that said, I'm not gonna read through his questions, guys. You guys can read. Those of you that are watching this on the replay, it's been on the screen long enough, hopefully, you've read it. If you're just listening to it, well, tough shit, sorry.

How Does AnswerConnect Handle Calls For Service Providers As Part Of Local Lead Gen?

I haven't done that yet because I've been using Answer Connect for that. I've been using AnswerConnect since 2012 and there's really no reason for me to change what I've got currently. Now going forward, I may give CallRail's answering service a try. Okay. Excuse me. AnswerConnect does take call, it's a 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. There's no time off for them. Okay.

All of the lead gen properties that I have that route through a call center, the call center will answer the phone whenever the caller calls. The reason I do that specifically is because a lot of my contractors, most of the lead gen stuff that I do is for contractors and most of my contractors are working contractors. In other words, they're out in the field performing work duties, whatever that may be, and so a lot of the times are too busy to answer the phone.

I learned a long time ago that when I routed lead gen calls direct to the contractors, unless they had a receptionist that was going to be live and answering the phone during normal work hours, then I was missing a lot of calls, I wasn't getting paid for a lot of calls that I was generating because they weren't answering the phone. So, I lost a lot of money. I left a lot of money on the table when I was routing calls direct to the contractors, unless they had their own receptionist, which was rare, because usually it was the owner of the business that would take the phone call direct on a cell phone.

Number two, if you've been doing any sort of lead gen work or client work for any amount of time, you already know how much spam calls come through. When you send phone calls direct to a client, the more exposure you get them online the more spam calls they're going to receive. That's another benefit of having an answering service, a call center will screen the calls so that no spam or notifications get to the contractor, the service provider.

That's a huge sales benefit, guys, because when you're talking to a service provider that's gonna be buying leads from you, if you can say, “Hey, the only time you're gonna get any lead information is when they're qualified pre-screened leads. They're qualified calls that have been pre-screened by our call center so you're not gonna get hammered with spam calls. You're not gonna get shitty unqualified messages.” Does that make sense?

Anyways, from that, yes, my answering service, Answerconnect.com. You can go check them out. I've been using them for years. They have a script that they read and ask the caller of specific information. I provide that script. For example, let's say that it's Pepper Tree Services, is the lead gen asset. They would answer “Pepper Tree Services, how may I help you?” Caller would say whatever and you can go through a whole role-playing thing and that's basically what it is. “Do you provide free estimates?” “Yes, we do. We provide tree removal, tree trimming, blah blah blah blah. May I take your name, your phone number, the address of your property, when's the best time to call, what's the service you're needing?”

That's the type of thing, just a very quick survey that they ask them and to qualify the call, get the pertinent information, and then from there, that lead, as soon as the call is ended, and by the way, the answering service just says, “Yeah. We're gonna have our estimator call you back as soon as possible,” or shortly, something like that. “Thank you for your information. Our estimator will call you momentarily.” Okay.

As soon as the phone call ends, then the dispatch center or the AnswerConnect, they forward the call information, the lead info, the contact information to the contractor via email and text, and I get a copy of it via email for my records. Okay. So, that is the billable call right there. There is no duration. The only time that there's … That was number two, I think that was another part of your question.

But also, in some cases, and I mentioned this, there is a live call transfer at the end of the contact information being collected by the call screener, the AnswerConnect. Then, at the end of that, in some cases, I have the call which is live routed or live transferred to the actual contractor at that point, but not until all of the contact information has been secured and taken by the answering service. Right? Because if the contractor doesn't answer, that way we still have that lead information, and that's still a billable call for me. Does that make sense?

Again, the moment the call is done it's mailed out, it's emailed out and texted to the contractor, and I get an email copy of it. Like I said, sometimes there's live transfers, it just depends on the arrangement I have with the contractor.

As for monetizing, I have several types of arrangements, but the most are, because you were asking about that, everybody has to have an ROI, yes. But what I do, it's several different types of arrangements, lease location, which is the simplest for a flat monthly fee. That's where the contractor does not pay per lead. For example, maybe it's a GMB asset or a couple of assets or whatever that I'm gonna rent out to them and it'll be, say, $300, $350 a month, something like that.

Let's say just one asset with an answering service, it's $300 a month. It will cost me roughly $50 a month for an answering service for one location. Depending on call volume, that varies, but let's just say roughly 50. That means I'm making $250. I don't charge on a per call basis for that type of arrangement. Okay. I have several of those out there. Okay. That's what Local Lease Pro is all about.

For pay per lead arrangements, the call is billable as soon as AnswerConnect has collected lead info. In other words, AnswerConnect screens the calls and only the calls that result in full info collected are deemed billable. Right? When I say full info, a lot of times a customer or a prospect, a caller doesn't wanna leave their physical address. Yet, we asked that. Many times we get it, but a lot of the times or sometimes people say no, they're not comfortable giving out their address until they've talked and spoken with the estimator. That still counts as a billable lead because the vast majority of the contact information has been filled out or collected. Right? That's the answer to number one.

How Do You Expand The Number Of Keywords On A GMB For Greater Coverage?

The reason I say that, I'm not trying to be a dick, but the reason I'm saying that is because I can't tell you how many times I've tried to do research about keywords and found that there was no data or little data or poor data or very low numbers and things like that, but then I've set up campaigns and just knocked it right the hell out of the park with trafficking inversions. I've had that occur via Adwords, like Google Ads, but also just from SEO campaigns.

My point is, even though you may have seen the data and you've applied some formula or another, every specific location, and I have found, will produce it unique results. Right? There's gonna be commonalities among all locations, yes, but what I found is, I could have a tree service Google Ads campaign set up in one location and the same campaign basically set up in another city. There's a set of keywords that are gonna be typical or normal, but then I see a lot of traffic coming in from different sets of keywords for each location, if that makes sense.

What I'm saying is, regardless of what your data shows, without you actually setting up a test campaign and pulling actual real data in, then you're really flying blind. All you can do is make an educated guess. You're speculating, right? So, I would recommend, one of the best ways, guys, to find research is to determine which types of keywords are gonna be bringing traffic, and which types of leads you can get, what conversions are gonna be like, is throw some money at Google Ads, set up some Google Ads campaigns.

You can do it with lead gen stuff, guys. Invest some money to discover what your industry is really about, where the traffic-producing keywords are within your specific vertical. Guys, spending some money on AdWords is a great investment in that case because you'll find out which keywords are bringing the clicks. You can actually start to dial in your copy and your landing pages and everything that way so that any SEO that you apply you already know is going to generate results because you've got the data from AdWords that proves it and you've been able to start dialing the campaign in on that side.

Because, remember, yes, you're spending money on Google Ads, guys, but how much time does it take to get significant results from SEO? I mean, obviously, you can do some Local GMB Pro stuff and some Local Lease Pro stuff and get some quick results, initially. But I'm talking about, if you want to build a really good campaign, like what he's talking about with the type of leads that he wants to get, then I would recommend that you would be doing content marketing and developing out real good content strategy. Just start capturing all those different types of keywords that could bring traffic. But that's gonna take time. You can get some initial results immediately with Google Adwords, which will also give you the best data that you can use to develop or design your SEO campaigns around.

Okay. Those are great questions. Again, Will, next time save this length of a question for either the Mastermind or in the POFU Live group, and that's only to be courteous to everybody else. Does anybody else wanna comment on that before I move on?

Hernan: I think that was perfect, Bradley.

Would You Recommend Using A CoWorking Space Address For A GMB Profile?

Bradley: Okay. I need a drink after that one. Olena's up. “Following the manual approach of getting an address for my GMB profile. Beside a postal box …” By the way, I had a PO box that I had secured a few weeks ago and it was gonna run out of … Before I was buying them up from our own services really. I had gotten notification that I hadn't gone and actually claimed the box, and got the number signed and picked up the keys and all that. So, I went to go do that just yesterday, as a matter of fact, and I had filled out the street addressing form and all that.

I took it to the post office and they basically denied it. They said that they wouldn't honor the street address option at that particular location. Which I thought was bullshit. I've said many, many times, guys, that sometimes you have to educate the postal workers about that street address option. Well, this was the first time that … I've had to educate many of them that said, “I'm not sure that we do that,” and I'd say, “Yes, you do. I got this from the USPS website, this form. Every one of you do it. It's United States Postal Service. This is not an independent Postal Service. You know what I mean? It's the National United States Postal Service. You all take this form.”

Well, this one today denied it, or yesterday, I guess it was, denied it. So, I walked out of there mad and I was actually able to get a refund on my PO box, anyways. I shouldn't have even spent the time to drive out there because we have our own service now and it would have saved me a ton of time. But since I had already paid for it, I thought I would do it. So just so you know that PO box stuff, it does work. There's no doubt. I've got them all over Northern Virginia. But there are some locations that just flat out, they're gonna tell you no, because they don't understand it or they haven't been educated on it, and they won't let you do it. So, just keep that in mind.

“I've spoken to them about receiving verification from Google and they allow companies to operate and work from its premise.” Yep. “Being that Google is aware of this co-working spaces address since they have their own verified GMB profile, do you see any issues with getting another GMB profile with the same address?” No, because here's the thing, in this case, you literally could go to the co-working space to meet potential clients or clients. Right? That's what the whole co-working spaces were for. It's for people, it's like flexible office space, right?

Let's say you work from home, so your home isn't conducive to entertaining or prospecting or pitching prospects, right? You know what I mean? I wouldn't want potential prospects coming to my house or clients come to my house either. These co-working spaces, that's what they're designed for. So, I don't think it would be an issue.

Now I haven't actually set one up there, but I don't think it would be an issue because that's a perfectly valid reason to have a co-working space or shared office space. Right? Because you work from home. But when you need to host an event or meet with clients, then you go to your shared office space. To me, that's perfectly logical. I don't think it would be any problem.

Anybody see any problems with that?

Hernan: I think that's pretty cool. I haven't thought about that, but that makes sense.

Bradley: Yeah.

Marco: No. I don't see any problem because she's gonna have her own business name and she's gonna have a different phone number. The only thing that's going to be the same is the address and, hopefully, they'll give you like a suite or some type of identifier that will make the address a little bit different-

Bradley: Like a box number or a suite here.

Marco: Yeah, from everybody else's. That's perfectly okay. Think of an office building and how many different companies can share an office building, right? Google doesn't see any problem with that. The co-working space idea, to me, in that same vein in that you're in an office space, you're renting office space just like if you were with all other companies, except this would be just part-time and just to do what it is that you need to do. I see it perfectly okay.

Marco: It would just get the code in there. But he actually got me thinking. Scott, because I think this is Scott, right? Scott Rogers, here's the deal, nothing beats a try but I fail. He wants to have an iFrame stack within that JPEG image. Do that, but then drop some schema before the closing tag in your iFrame. Add some schema in there and then run it through Google's structured data testing tool. Right? You're gonna have to upload the image somewhere so that Google can go in and-

Bradley: Oh, my gosh, I see what you're saying.

Marco: -look for structured data. If Google reads it, then you just got an iFrame stack within that image. Wouldn't it be good if you could just duplicate that multiple times within that comment section. Different iFrame. I'm thinking ID loop to loop.

Bradley: Hey, do you realize we're on Hump Day Hangouts right now, Marco?

Marco: Sorry.

Bradley: Aren't you usually the one pulling the reins back on me?

Marco: No, he got me thinking. Sorry.

Bradley: But, guys, did you just hear what he just said? I don't know whether that will work or not, but that's the next test, right? Guys, take an image. Even if you're not trying to stack an iFrame in the metadata, just create json-ld markup, like local business markup, for example, drop it in the comment section, the metadata of the JPEG image, save it, upload it. Then, go to the structured data testing tool with the image file URL, and stick that in there and test it. Read it and see if it will pull back the structured data.

I've never even thought of that and again I haven't tested it. It might not work, it might not read it at all. But that's an interesting test. I'd like to test that now.

Marco: Me too, which is why he got me thinking. Man, he just got the juices flowing. I said the only way to test that is doing it that way, to see if Google will read the code.

Can An iFrame Be Tweeted Out?

Bradley: Yeah, that's interesting. That's a new test. Okay, cool. “Can an iFrame be tweeted out somehow?” Well, when you tweet out a YouTube video, that's basically a tweeted iFrame. I don't know if you can iFrame other stuff because Twitter just converts the YouTube URL into an embed, which is an iFrame. Marco, can you tweet out on iFrame?

Marco: I think that Twitter turns it into an image, if I'm not mistaken. I haven't done Twitter stuff in a long time, guys. We haven't needed to look for that extra power. Twitter stuff? I'm out of tune with Twitter right now.

Bradley: Yeah. I was never in tune with Twitter. I just never cared, honestly. I know you can get a lot of power on it but …

Hernan: Yeah. We used to do some nasty shit with Twitter, like pinging, t.co Google shortener, and then we will ping it with something like ScrapeBox and a Google shortener, where we show up a bunch of hits coming from Twitter, like simulating virality. That was fun, but yeah, it's been a while.

Bradley: Yeah. You could take a tweet with Google short URL and then have it retweeted and it would look like hits to that URL.

Hernan: Right.

Bradley: Yeah.

Hernan: Twitter, anything that you throw at Twitter will become a t.co shortener.

Bradley: Yeah. You could mimic a post going viral or a video going viral just buying retweet gigs from Fiverr. It was cool. It worked really well for video SEO. It probably still does, I haven't done it in a while.

Hernan: Maybe.

How Much Power Do You Lose If You Don’t Put The Map Embed On Every Website Page?

As a matter of fact, if you take a look … I'm gonna talk about this from a couple of … I'm sure Marco has some input on this too. But when it comes to structured data, I know that's not specifically what you're asking about, but when it comes to structured data, like local business markup or organization markup, that kind of stuff, it's not necessary to put that site wide. Right? Specifically in Google's structured data guide, it talks about how it really only needs to be on a Locations page, About Us page or Contact Us page. That's it. It doesn't have to be anywhere else on the site. We typically put it site wide in the HTML header. But we don't have to. It can be according, to Google's own recommended best practices guide, it can be on the Locations, About Us, or Contact Us page. Right?

When it comes to a map, I totally get that, if a client doesn't want the map site wide in the footer or in the sidebar or something like that, then just put it on the Contact page, About Us page, or Locations page. That's perfectly fine since you have an @id page that you have the map embedded into. That's where you do all your nasty stuff. You don't need to worry about having it on every page on your site.

That's my take on it. I know you can get more link equity or link flow flowing to a map that's on the home page in the sidebar and the footer than you could if it was on an inner page, obviously. Right? Because that's where most of the juice flows to a domain, is the root. But again, I wouldn't worry about it since you have an @id page. Obviously, you've got to always consider what the client wants.

Marco, what do you say?

Marco: Yeah. If you follow RYS training, especially the black book, we recommend the home page just for that reason. Most of the link equity, most of … everything goes into the homepage and then Google branches out from there. That's why we recommend it on the home page. You can make my map look really good, I mean, with custom pin and all that stuff, so that the client doesn't really complain about what it does aesthetically. I mean, if you're scrolling down, I don't know what the concern is with my map in the footer. You can always control it with Widget Logic or some other type of plug-in where the map will display so that doesn't display site-wide. But I do like it on the home page, Jordan. Maybe you can sneak an accordion in there.

Bradley: Yeah.

Marco: Some type of accordion so that is hidden within the accordion. But I want it either on the sidebar or in the footer, or both.

Bradley: What about instead of an embed just a contextual link in the footer or something that says “see us on Google Maps” or something, then even put a keyword as the link and just linking to it? That's still not as good as embed, I get that, but then you'd still have a home page link pushing equity to it.

Marco: Yeah, but it's not the iFrame. I'm looking for the iFrame. That's all I'm looking for. I'm looking for that iFrame with that JavaScript link going back to the my map and the drive stack.

Bradley: Then, I got you. Jordan, there you go. According to Marco, yeah, an accordion menu, like an expandable menu, that would be good. You could put it behind something, like somebody clicks on it and it expands and there it is, but that way it's still on the home page, it's still benefiting from the root into the home page. There you go. All right.

Yeah. Well, the problem with doing those type of businesses is, remember, a point-of-sale business or a storefront where the customer comes to the business location to transact business. Like an accountant, for example, for the most part, people go to the accounting office. I mean, my accountant actually comes to my home. But again, for the most part, if you're going to be doing it that way, storefront type businesses, the problem arises when a user, a Google user does a search like “accountant near me” or “CPA near me” and then they find your listing, and what happens if they don't call? They just go to the office. People do that still, right? People still do that. They still find something near me and then go to that location without calling or anything.

What are they gonna do? They show up at a co-working space, shared office space, like we were just talking about earlier, and the accountant is not there because you're just leasing that asset and directing leads to wherever the accountant's real office is. So, that would piss users off and it's eventually going to end up either with negative reviews on your GMB listing for that or it's going to get reported as the business doesn't actually physically exist there. Then, Google will terminate it for spam. That's the problem with trying to do lead gen stuff with storefront businesses, guys. Again, you're welcome to try it, but I'm telling you the potential problems that you're gonna run into, that are very likely to happen.

I would be pissed off if I did a search something near me, found a store supposedly, and I go to drive to that location or walk or whatever, I get to that location to find out that it was a spammed GMB listing. I'd be pissed. I'm an SEO, you know what I mean? I would even understand why they did it, but I'd still be mad that they wasted my time. Does that make sense? It would either end up, me, I would leave a shitty review or it would be reported. You know what I mean? I'm not saying I would report, I don't typically do that.

But my point is, somebody would and that could end up being a problem. If you end up with negative reviews on your Maps listing, it's gonna affect your GMB asset, even if it doesn't get reported. But if you end up doing it clients and you rebrand it for them, then that's technically a negative, it's negative reflection on their business. That could be a problem for you too.

I don't recommend doing it for storefront businesses, guys. In that case, organic rankings and Google Ads, those are my two favorite sources for that type. Okay. Do you guys have any comments on that or should I move on? We're almost done anyways, I think.

Marco: No.

Does Using Call Rail Phone Tracking For A Client’s GMB Account Create Problems With NAP Consistency?

If all you're doing is trying to track calls through the Google My business listing, then you could have both phone numbers in there, because Google will be aware of both numbers. So, your NAP from your citations would still be built to the customers number, but you could have the GMB listing displaying your tracking number as long as the customer's phone number is still in the GMB dashboard. Because you can add more than one number, is what I'm saying, but you would make the primary number your tracking number.

Now I haven't tested that in quite some time. I don't know if that's going to cause problems with existing citations out there, NAP inconsistency. My point is Google … The reason why I'm telling you this is because I know for a fact, and I've talked on the phone with Google My Business support reps about this, I have a client that has a physical location that is displayed incorrectly in Google Maps. When I edit the info, it's a storefront business, it's a preschool, when I edit the info for the store, the location of the business, it's always correct, it's been added or inputted correctly to GMB, yet GMB or Google My Business Google Maps displays the address in a different format.

I contacted them and said, “Well, how am I supposed to build business directories listings, should I use the correctly formatted address the way the United States Postal Service says it should be standard address formatting or should I use what's displayed?” The Google reps have said to me that I should use what the correct address format that is entered in the backend or Google My Business dashboard. Even though the Google is displaying it differently, they're displaying it differently because the other addresses in that shopping center are displayed that way. So, it's the more common display type. So all the citations are built with the correct formatted address, which does not match what shows on the Google My Business, if that makes sense. Yet, I've never had any problems with that listing. I was able to get it ranked very, very quickly and it's ranked today. That had been a client of mine now for a little over a year.

So, my point is, I know that as long as the data on the backend is inputted correctly, the Google is aware of it. It shouldn't cause you any problems, if you want to add your tracking number as the display number in GMB, as long as the primary business number is still included in the GMB dashboard.

But again, I have not tested that specifically. It should work, but I haven't tested it. The only other way that you could do it would be to set up the listing with that number or flat out, just the tracking number, I mean, or flat out change it and then do a citation cleanup. But then that puts you in control of their phone number across all their listings, not just their Maps listing and most clients aren't gonna go for that.

As far as tracking other results, remember, you have GMB Insights. You should have probably access to Analytics, so if you're doing work for your clients, then you should always take screenshots when you start the project. I take screenshots monthly so that we have a progression, they can always go back and look at screenshots side by side or scroll through them in a folder and look and see the type of results, increase in impressions, increase in number of keywords, increase in traffic numbers, decrease in rank, like getting higher in the search results, that kind of stuff. All of those are kind of metrics that you can show to prove what you're doing, if you're not tracking calls specifically.

That was a good question.

Marco: CallRail had a dynamic call tracking or call insertion. I forget what it's called in CallRail. But look into that so that you can track results for the client. Now as far as GMB, get your own assets and redirect the calls to the client, you track them in CallRail, you send them to the client's number, everybody's happy.

What Are Your Thoughts On PressCable's Statement That All News Sites Purge PRs From Sites?

For example, and I've said this before, NBC 29 is the Richmond, Virginia NBC affiliate and Richmond is the capital of Virginia. So, NBC 29, every time a press release gets published for a Virginia, a client of mine or one of my lead gen assets that are in Virginia, the NBC 29 press release typically ranks very, very well.

But I've seen those live as many as six months later, I think six months is like the definitive cutoff point where they purge for those. But I've also seen like no shit on the NBC 29 domain the press release purged within two weeks. So, I really don't understand, like sometimes it's two weeks, sometimes it's a month, sometimes six weeks, sometimes it's six months. So, I don't understand what their criteria is for purging. There may be some publications out there that it's a year and then they purge them or whatever.

That's why, like I went back through the Local PR Pro training and I very specifically talked about, with the PR stacking, that you should really know the services that you're using to identify which are the best stacking targets. In other words, find ones that are permanent. That's why I love Press Advantage and that's why we use it so much. We sell Press Advantage Press Releases because the Press Advantage domain itself is powerful. You get an organization page, which is a great link target. It's fabulous, plus it's got iFrames embedded. It's awesome, guys.

But then the actual Press Releases from Press Advantage rank very well, they're very well written, you get NAP and a do-follow link on it. It's just really, really strong and they don't purge. So, those become now are my primary link targets for a PR stack or my Press Advantage PRs. Or Digital Journal, which are all no-follow links, but it's still powerful.

If you are submitting Press Releases through PressCable, you'll notice that, and it might only be on premium distribution, but you'll get distributed out to newswire.net. Newswire.net, I don't think they purge from there either and that's another good link target. So, I would check into that, Dan. I can't remember though, because I have a subscription to Press Cable too. I don't remember if newswire.net is only for the premium distribution or if that's part of the regular distribution.

All right, last two questions, guys. I know we're a couple minutes over. We should be out here in about three minutes. Wayne says, “What is today, Bradley? Let's give away all the goodies from the Mastermind.” Yeah. “LOL. Truly good stuff you're sharing here today. If you haven't seriously considered joining Mastermind, then consider today's info, just to taste of the high-quality info you will garner from Mastermind.”

Thank you, Wayne. I appreciate that. Merry Christmas to you buddy and your family. Wayne's been a member of ours for as long as I can remember. Thanks, Wayne.

How Do You Get The Most Bang For Your Buck On Each Google Post?

Casey says, “Thank you guys for doing this. How do you get the most bang for your buck on each Google post?” I guess timing really. You have a good image, but the timing is really important. Marco talks about that a lot. You can see that, you can identify those kind of the best times just from looking at Insights reports. So, look at your Google Insights, Casey. I'm not gonna go in the detail here. Just go look at your Google insights report and take a look at the days that bring the most engagement and those are probably the days that you should be posting more often. At least in my opinion, it's probably how to get the most bang from a GMB post, if that makes sense.

Marco, what would you say?

Marco: If you go into the historical data, you can actually get the times when people tend to reach out for whatever. I don't care what niche. There are certain times that people are more active than others. Days also, we found that out with Mario. What the days were when you should be posting and the Times. That's all in the historical data and that's all shared inside the Local GMB Pro. I'm not gonna do it in here.

Bradley: Yeah. What's really cool was I recently landed a very large, well, for me, AdWords client or Google Ads client, it's about 20k a month an ad spend. That's the biggest account I've managed for Adwords, specifically. It's really cool. AdWords has come a long, long way in the last year, guys. It's really crazy, like the amount of stuff that's been added in Adwords, like automated bidding strategies and all this kind of stuff. But what's cool is they have an overview report now, which will show you, it'll give you recommendations on how to optimize the campaigns more.

One of the things that it does is, it shows you, after you have enough data, it'll show you the times of days that your ads are most likely to receive clicks or that people are most active and engaged, or most active searching for those type of keywords. It will actually tell you that, through using automated bidding strategies, it can increase your CPC bid or whatever during those times and decrease it during the times that the data shows that people are less likely to be active. So that you can stretch your marketing, your budgeting dollars out further, you can get more bang for your buck, essentially.

That kind of data you can actually apply to, that's what Marco's saying, you can get similar kind of data. I don't know if it's nearly as accurate, but you can get similar data from GMB Insights. If you're are using AdWords, you can also plan your content strategy around publishing content at those times that AdWords recommends that people most likely to engage with your ads or your content, your brand, if that makes sense.

Again, use the data that they give you, guys, to fine-tune your marketing campaigns. That's all I can say. All right. Thanks everybody for being here. Merry Christmas to all and to all, a good night. I'll see guys next week.